News archive 2011

The Fourth Annual Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo) opened today in Rome, with more than 600 delegates from 150 countries convening to exchange and scale-up best practices and innovative solutions to complex food security challenges. The conference is hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and organized in conjunction with more than 20 United Nations agencies and partners.

FAO and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will work together to protect important agricultural heritage systems in Islamic countries under a Memorandum of Understanding. The agreement falls under FAO’s Globally Important Heritage Systems initiative.

In just two years FAO, IFAD and WFP have assisted over 22 million people hardest hit by the global food price crisis thanks to generous funding from the European Union’s Food Facility — providing tangible evidence that investing in agriculture and nutrition improves global food security, the three UN agencies said today.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has adopted a new global framework for the conservation and sustainable use of the diversity of plants on which food and agriculture depend. FAO’s governing Council meeting in Rome approved the Second Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

A new, satellite-based survey released by FAO provides a more accurate picture of changes in the world's forests, showing forest land use declined between 1990 and 2005. The survey used high-resolution satellite imagery provided by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the United States Geological Survey.

The global food system needs to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to succeed in feeding a growing world population, says a new FAO report presented today at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa. Agriculture both requires energy and can produce it - an "energy-smart" approach to agriculture would involve taking better advantage of this dynamic to improve efficiency, reduce waste and increase the use of alternative energy in food production.

Widespread degradation and deepening scarcity of land and water resources have placed key food production systems around the globe at risk, posing a profound challenge to the task of feeding a world population expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, according to a major new FAO report published today, The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture.

An assessment conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) indicates an improvement in the main annual harvest for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) compared to 2010 but highlights ongoing concerns over the nutrition situation, particularly among young children.

FAO and World Vision International, one of the world’s largest non-governmental humanitarian organizations, are joining forces in promoting global food security under an agreement signed here. The Memorandum of Understanding lays out terms and conditions for joint actions and projects for the promotion of food security over a three-year period.

As pressure on the world's water resources reaches unsustainable levels in an increasing number of regions, a "business-as-usual" approach to economic development and natural resource management will no longer be possible, FAO today told participants at an international meeting on water, energy and food security being held in Bonn.